American Notes: Aug 5, 1985

WATER New York City's Plutonium Scare

Even by the sometimes shrill standards of the New York Post, the headline seemed lurid: CHILLING DISCOVERY AFTER MANIAC'S THREAT: PLUTONIUM IN CITY'S WATER. Have New York City's 7 million residents been imbibing water that is laced with nuclear-reactor fuel?

The answer last week from New York's ebullient Mayor Ed Koch: Yes, but don't worry. Koch, in making the surprise announcement, explained that on April 1 an anonymous letter writer had threatened to dump "substantial quantities" of poisonous plutonium into the city's water supply unless all charges were dropped against Bernhard Goetz, the subway vigilante who is awaiting trial for shooting four teenagers he alleges were threatening him on a Manhattan train last December. In late April, a sample from the city's water system contained levels of cancer-causing plutonium up to 200 times as high as normal but still no more than .4% of federally established danger levels. Declared Koch: "The water is absolutely safe to drink." Law-enforcement authorities are still looking for a culprit. Shrugged the mayor: "We don't know if it was a hoax, sham or a deranged mind."

Frustrated by guerrilla attacks on U.S. citizens in Central America, the Reagan White House has weighed a wide variety of retaliatory moves. The latest of these, prompted by the June guerrilla attack on outdoor cafés in San Salvador, in which four off-duty U.S. Marines, two American businessmen and seven other people were shot dead, called for the bombing of a military base in Nicaragua. According to Administration officials, guerrillas are trained at the base, on Nicaragua's Cosigüina Peninsula for attacks on Americans. One suspect in the June attack was identified and traced to the Cosigüina camp through documents that had been captured by the Salvadoran army.

Armed with what was considered "hard evidence" against Nicaragua's Sandinista government, Administration hard-liners pressed for a retaliatory air strike after the café killings. President Reagan, however, declined for fear of killing civilians and alarming U.S. allies in Latin America. According to one well-placed U.S. official, the bombing option "never got that close." Instead, the Administration "put Nicaragua on notice" that it would be held responsible for any future attacks on Americans in Honduras or El Salvador.

Since President Reagan underwent cancer surgery, thousands of older Americans have called their doctors for colorectal screening examinations. During the first week after his condition was announced, the American Cancer Society's Washington telephone hotline, which normally handles two or three requests a week, fielded 1,500 inquiries. The callers were asking for the free home kit that tests for blood in the stool, a sign that may indicate the presence of cancer. Like other cancer clinics across the U.S., the Chicago-based Portes Center is logging some 400 appointments a week, almost triple the usual rate.